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PSA: I'm a complete tool

Noob Sammich

Sergeant of the Hide
Minuteman
Sep 27, 2020
131
190
My OCD won't allow my to put a dirty rifle away. I quickly run a boresnake through and the end of the bore snake gets hung up in the chamber and the damn thing rips. I try to fish around with a couple plastic picks and break the ends of the picks in the chamber.

Tomorrow I'll take the barrel off and see if some needle nose pliers can fish it out.

Anyways, I've used boresnakes before in a pinch and always figured the main issues against them were dragging dirt through your bore or messing up your crown, but I figured only a complete idiot would get his snake stuck.... Lesson learned.
 
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Hey,
Just run a cleaning rod down from the muzzle and punch it out. Super easy.
Bore snakes are fine. You just don’t know how to fix your problem. Don’t worry. We can help you.

Tried this, there's enough in there that's it's close to the muzzle and packing it up. I don't want to REALLY plug this thing up.
 
Ever slug a barrel? This could be a time to give it a shot. Super simple to do, especially since you aren't actually looking for just how narrow your bore actually is.
 
No, no, my friend. It’s shotguns we don’t clean....rifled firearms get clean...well, at least occasionally. LOL.

3600 rounds and you never saw any impact to precision?
You must not shoot a whole lot of shotgun. Plastic from the wads builds up pretty good in the barrels and totally blows your pattern. You have to scrub the fuck out of the barrel to get it all out a few times during the season unless you want your buddies in league to kick your ass. You will miss a lot of birds with a gunky bore.
 
You must not shoot a whole lot of shotgun. Plastic from the wads builds up pretty good in the barrels and totally blows your pattern. You have to scrub the fuck out of the barrel to get it all out a few times during the season unless you want your buddies in league to kick your ass. You will miss a lot of birds with a gunky bore.
Hi Jim - don’t know what you shoot in shotguns but I competed at NSSA skeet for a number of decades and would put 20k shells a year thru the K80 or Kolar.

choke tubes collect plastic but I know many shooters who believe that this will only build up to a point then will blow as much off as accumulated.

and all that plastic did was tighten the choke, really. I don’t see that as a blown pattern, personally.

I would clean both barrels (12ga and barrel for sub gauge tube barrel) when going to a big shoot that I was excited about. But mostly that was just like my view that a clean car seems to run better! LOL.

I have a good friend who is prob the most medaled American skeet champ (not internstional/Olympic) living and I know he never cleans a shotgun. I’m sure when Krieghoff gets a hold of it at the World and service it that they give it a clean. But that’s once a year at the end of the season.

I wipe off the grease from the receiver and monoblock every outing and regrease the next outing.

now I’m a bit old and a bit broken down (back) and just can’t do it anymore.

best of luck to you now.
 
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I have a new puppy i bet can get it out. He gets everything else out.
Talk about funny neighbors have a new chocolate lab pup I take out for them when they are not home. He has one of those plastic balls you stuff treats in and freeze....I was howling watching him go to work on that dang puppies are a riot.
 
I clean when accuracy degrades or I have an issue I think might be cleaning related. I never got the idea of cleaning every range trip. If its still humming, why get involved?

Why change the oil in your car until there is an issue?

If you clean regularly, accuracy never degrades.
 
Have you asked Jacob what he thinks? He says clean when accuracy falls off or every several hundred rounds. They did a test of this at RO where one guy cleaned his barrel every time he shot, and Jacob and Frank cleaned their barrels when accuracy fell off or when they had reached several hundred rounds. The guy who cleaned all the time burned his barrel out at around 5K if I remember correctly and Jacob and Frank burned theirs out at around 12K for both of their 308 barrels.

Zealous cleaning has destroyed more barrels than not cleaning enough.
 
I clean when accuracy degrades or I have an issue I think might be cleaning related. I never got the idea of cleaning every range trip. If its still humming, why get involved?
Carbon will build up... Some cartridges worse than others... And it will raise chamber pressure and velocity. If you track velocity after cleaning the average steadily increases shot by shot
 
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Have you asked Jacob what he thinks? He says clean when accuracy falls off or every several hundred rounds. They did a test of this at RO where one guy cleaned his barrel every time he shot, and Jacob and Frank cleaned their barrels when accuracy fell off or when they had reached several hundred rounds. The guy who cleaned all the time burned his barrel out at around 5K if I remember correctly and Jacob and Frank burned theirs out at around 12K for both of their 308 barrels.

Zealous cleaning has destroyed more barrels than not cleaning enough.

Proper cleaning has never destroyed a barrel.

And you can’t make comparisons to people running steel rods or caustic chemicals. That would be like saying the guy that put sand in gas tank shouldn’t have fueled up.

Jacob and Frank aren’t always correct either. And opinions change. Jacob used to make fun of people shooting 6mm. Guess what he shoots now?
 
You also can’t take one example as a “test.”

That 5k barrel could have easily burned out for several other reasons not related to cleaning.

Lou Murdica has tried every cleaning method on the planet and sent barrels back to manufacturers to check. They can’t tell any difference or find any harm. He tests things for a living. That’s real testing.

Not two barrels and saying it’s definitive.
 
Hi,

LOLOL you seriously made a PSA advising people to never use a particular product because of something YOU did???

Hahaha your so "OCD" that you attempted to pull start a bore snake because you just cannot end your day with a dirty rifle but not so "OCD" that you cannot go to sleep with it stuck in your barrel......

Ever wonder why manufacturer representatives are not on forums like they used to be?

Sincerely,
Theis
 
Proper cleaning has never destroyed a barrel.

And you can’t make comparisons to people running steel rods or caustic chemicals. That would be like saying the guy that put sand in gas tank shouldn’t have fueled up.

Jacob and Frank aren’t always correct either. And opinions change. Jacob used to make fun of people shooting 6mm. Guess what he shoots now?
I’ll have to find it but Criterion did a similar side by side comparison and if memory serves came to the polar opposite conclusion. The cleaned barrel faired much better by a long shot.
 
You must not shoot a whole lot of shotgun. Plastic from the wads builds up pretty good in the barrels and totally blows your pattern. You have to scrub the fuck out of the barrel to get it all out a few times during the season unless you want your buddies in league to kick your ass. You will miss a lot of birds with a gunky bore.
Oh ya this ^ is a royal Pain in the ass to get out after a trap tournament. I used to hate this....
And .38hbwc with the ol Lewis lead remover, anybody remember use one of those ?
 
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Why change the oil in your car until there is an issue?

If you clean regularly, accuracy never degrades.
Not to dig too far into the analogy, but I know when its time to change my motorcycle oil based on how the transmission feels when shifting, usually a fair bit before the manufacturer recommended interval. Cleaning every range trip is, in my opinion, unnecessary. Lots of factors, some powders are worse than others, every barrel is different etc, but every trip is more than what is necessary in my rifle. YMMV
 
Boresnakes get stuck a fair amount. They're so convenient in the field, though!

Anyway, reversing direction in general is bad. Try cutting off excess, and driving it out original direction with a dowel. Sometimes compressed air through a brass fitting can also drive it out.

If it won't move, take an old steel cleaning rod, sharpen it, heat it red hot, and insert it into the center of the boresnake to burn out the center. Do this repeatedly. Obviously this is painstaking, but eventually you can remove enough material to unstick it.
 
Everyone can do what they like but I'll follow what Jacob told me in person. Clean when accuracy falls off or after a couple thousand rounds.

I've got at least a 1k since last cleaning on the gun I used for a week at RO. In January, I canoed a doe head at 150 yards from an out-of-position rest. Not time just yet to clean...
 
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To each his own

Lol @ waiting for accuracy to degrade before cleaning. Because that will happen at the most convenient time. 😒

I'll pull a boresnake with some oil as a final mop after a proper cleaning or pull it through on a gun thats been in the safe a while.

Or in the field if I get crap in the barrel.
 
Not to dig too far into the analogy, but I know when its time to change my motorcycle oil based on how the transmission feels when shifting, usually a fair bit before the manufacturer recommended interval. Cleaning every range trip is, in my opinion, unnecessary. Lots of factors, some powders are worse than others, every barrel is different etc, but every trip is more than what is necessary in my rifle. YMMV

I don’t disagree that every trip isn’t necessarily required. But waiting for accuracy or other such things is not a good idea. Especially if you compete or hunt seriously. You don’t get to decide when and how your accuracy will get to fall off or degrade.
 
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Hi,

LOLOL you seriously made a PSA advising people to never use a particular product because of something YOU did???

Hahaha your so "OCD" that you attempted to pull start a bore snake because you just cannot end your day with a dirty rifle but not so "OCD" that you cannot go to sleep with it stuck in your barrel......

Ever wonder why manufacturer representatives are not on forums like they used to be?

Sincerely,
Theis

I tossed and turned quite a bit if I'm being honest.
 
Ok, so I own up to my own shit. The damn thing had a knot in it, and I was running too fast to pay notice. Here's the offending snake.

PXL_20210314_151006945.jpg


Needle nose pliers did the trick.
 
You must not shoot a whole lot of shotgun. Plastic from the wads builds up pretty good in the barrels and totally blows your pattern. You have to scrub the fuck out of the barrel to get it all out a few times during the season unless you want your buddies in league to kick your ass. You will miss a lot of birds with a gunky bore.

LOL

If you say so
 
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Ok, so I own up to my own shit. The damn thing had a knot in it, and I was running too fast to pay notice. Here's the offending snake.

View attachment 7580983

Needle nose pliers did the trick.
How in the world did you get a knot in it....never mind, not sure I want to know. LOL.

I am glad you got it out and are back in shape.